This invention relates to improvements in the production of vegetable fiber and more particularly to an improved method and apparatus for harvesting ramie and for preparing fiber therefrom of high commercial quality, with a minimum of hand labor.
The use of ramie fiber apparently originated in the Orient and hand cleaned fiber known commercially as "China grass" was imported into this country for many years up until the time such imports were cut off by military activities in China. Unfortunately, this hand cleaned Chinese fiber was not sufficiently free of bark and other parts of the plants and was not received in sufficient quantity to achieve widespread use in the textile industry. It has been known since antiquity to Oriental peoples, however, as a source of fiber for domestic cloth. Presently it is being imported in finished goods form (sweaters, dresses) from Asian countries.
Some prior work has been done in an attempt to design a successful decorticating apparatus, but the majority of these earlier machines have been designed as general purpose machines and consequently do not operate satisfactorily with ramie, which has peculiar properties requiring specially designed machines.
For instance, ramie cannot be fed through a decorticating apparatus by normal feeding rolls since the ramie will wind up on the rolls and will not follow a straight path therebetween. This property therefore requires the employment of some sort of gripping means that will pull the ramie through the machine. Also, ramie fiber must be processed immediately after cutting the plants, as a fiber destroying ferment, apparently of enzymic character, begins soon after the plants are cut and the organic gums and resins in the plant also harden and become comparatively insoluble. This requires that the ramie decorticating apparatus be used at the location at which the plants are grown in the field. It should be noted that each ramie crop produces about ten (10) tons per acre per harvest and this machine eliminates 90% of the normal transport costs.
Although this invention is primarily concerned with the harvesting of ramie, and the preparation of fibers therefrom, this invention is also applicable to the harvesting of kenaf and the preparation of fibers therefrom. The invention also incorporates initial chemical processing in the field enabling handling and production costs to be substantially lower while improving the quality of the fiber and standardizing fiber lengths from the field so that the textile industry can depend on more uniform, high quality pre-classification fiber.
Inasmuch as ramie is a tropical plant growing best in well drained soils, the decorticating apparatus must be used in locations where very little skilled labor may be available, and where it is subject to adverse climatic conditions. To meet these conditions, the apparatus must be reasonably easy to transport and assemble, must be as completely automatic in operation as far as possible, and must have little tendency to get out of order. Further, in view of the necessity of cleaning the fiber immediately after cutting, it is highly desirable that a decorticator be included with the harvesting apparatus.
Heretofore, it has apparently been impractical to combine a harvester and decorticator in one unitary apparatus, partly because of the heavy weight typically associated with decorticators, and the fact that due to this weight, these prior art decorticators could not incorporate harvesting apparatus and still be light enough to move effectively over ground (on the ramie plantation) while incorporating efficient production capacity.
As the usable dried fiber amounts to only about four percent of the green weight of the stalks, any material loss of fiber is extremely important from a commercial viewpoint. Consequently, a decorticating apparatus, to be successful, must be designed to adequately clean the fiber and still not loose any appreciable amount thereof.
After the fiber has been cleanly decorticated and stapled, it is put through a degumming process (which is initiated in the field with the freshly decorticated stapled fiber), which dissolves the organic gums and resins which are present with the fiber. The fibers are then separated and carded according to usual textile methods and may be subsequently bleached, dyed, spun and woven as may be desired.
In order that the fiber separating and carding apparatus may operate successfully on the long staple fibers which the ramie plant produces, it is indispensable that the fibers are completely clean of any bark material or residue gums at the conclusion of the decorticating/degumming process and it is also highly desirable that the fibers should contain substantially all of the commercially usable fiber from the stalks.
It was to achieve an improved self-mobile harvesting/decorticating apparatus, utilizing in addition a highly advantageous stapling technique, while incorporating in-line fresh degumming that the present invention was evolved. It should also be noted that 80% of the crop production will be returned to the field as the machine moves through the field which decreased drastically the use of fertilizers and ecologically is an excellent way to maintain a better way to organically fertilize the crop. Additionally, transport costs are practically eliminated with this new system.